Sienkiewicz laughed in a throaty, pleasant—feminine—voice. “What’s the matter, sarge?” she asked Bradley. “You expect a little low-level radiation to kill us?”
All three of them laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.
* * *
The summons set off the bell and red flasher at either end of the barracks: it was a Priority One call. Marines threw down their mid-afternoon tasks and jumped to arms even before they heard the specifics of the message.
There was only one thing on Bethesda now that could justify a Priority One call to the Headhunters. A single Khalian unit, an infiltration commando, hadn’t died in heroically useless defense with the hundreds of thousands of other Khalia. The hit-and-run attacks of that surviving handful of weasels had been making things damned hot for the invasion forces.
The problem was beyond the equipment and experience of the Alliance troops that made up the bulk of the ground elements involved in Bethesda’s recovery.
But it was made to order for the 121st Marine Reaction Company.
Kowacs slid on his helmet. “Go ahead,” he said as his hands fumbled with the shirt he’d hung over the back of the chair he was sitting on. The information would be dumped into the unit’s data bank, but he liked to get his orders directly as well. It made him feel that he was involved in a human process, not just an electronic game.
Of course it would be the computer which decided whether they made the strike by truck or loaded onto the Bonnie Parker to drop straight onto the weasels, trading longer preparation time for faster transit to the target area. Computers were great for that sort of computation, but humans—
“Captain Kowacs,” said the synthesized voice of an artificial intelligence. “You are directed to report to District Governor, Admiral the Honorable Saburo Takami, immediately.”
“Huh?”
“A vehicle has been dispatched for you. It will arrive in one-point-five minutes. That is all.”
“Aye, aye,” Kowacs said dazedly, not that the electronic secretary would have given a damn even if it hadn’t broken the connection already. Priority fucking One.
He’d set it up so that all Priority One calls were slaved through the barracks loudspeakers. Everybody was staring at Kowacs as he stomped toward the door, sealing his shirt front while his hands were full of the equipment belt which he hadn’t had time to sling on properly yet.
“Daniello,” he called to his senior lieutenant, “hold the men in readiness.”
Nobody bothered to ask what they were to be ready for.
Corporal Sienkiewicz was already waiting outside with bandoliers of ammunition and two unloaded assault rifles. She handed a set to her commanding officer.
Because of the weasel raids, the military government was still treating the Fourth District as a combat zone. Personnel leaving Controlled Areas—bases and defense points—were ordered to carry weapons at all times, though the weapons were to be unloaded except on approved combat operations.
And Sienkiewicz was right: there was no telling what Kowacs was going to hear from Admiral Takami, or how fast the District Governor would expect him to respond.
It was just that Kowacs didn’t like to have a gun around when he talked to administrative types. It turned his thoughts in the wrong directions.
The jeep was strack and expensive, running on vectored thrust instead of the air cushion that would have been perfectly satisfactory on the plastic roadways of the base. The vehicle arrived within seconds of the time the AI had given Kowacs; and the driver—an enlisted man—had a voice almost as superciliously toneless as that of the machine when he said, “My orders are to transport one only to District Headquarters.”
“Then your orders were wrong,” said Kowacs as he and Sienkiewicz got into the jeep. He hadn’t intended her to come, and he didn’t need a bodyguard at District Headquarters—the sort of guarding that the big corporal could do, at any rate.
But neither was some flunky going to tell him he couldn’t bring an aide along if he wanted to.
The jeep sagged under the weight of a big man and a very big woman. Cursing under his breath, the driver lowered the surface-effect skirts and pulled back into traffic on the air cushion’s greater support.